Speaking of wicked birds, don’t miss Grimsby’s Annual Wayzgoose Bookarts Fair April 24, 2010, 9am – 5pm

Every year on the last Saturday in April, the Grimsby Public Art Gallery celebrates Wayzgoose, a festival of Book Arts.  It brings together private presses from all across Canada and the United States. Demonstrations and displays of paper making, book binding, calligraphy, paper marbling, and book making celebrate ‘the love of fine art, fine craft, and stories.’

And wotz more:

Some may remember this twee little post: Snail Mail, Country Style from last Fall. Well, here’s its kitschy Floridian cousin:

Not only is Kate Pullinger an accomplished novelist, she’s also an adventurous thinker, experimenting with fiction written for the printed page and for all sorts of digital platforms, including the cellphone. Recalling the last five minutes of my recent conversation with Kate, I couldn’t help but think of Lydia Davis, her superb hyper-short fiction…and how well suited it is – intentionally or not – to the cellphone and its reading public.

Here’s "Disagreement" from The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis (FSG, 2009):

Too arduous? Try this:

"A Double Negative"

"At a certain point in her life, she realizes it is not so much that she wants to have a child as that she does not want not to have a child, or not to have had a child."

or this:

"They Take Turns Using a Word  They Like"

"It’s extraordinary," says one woman.

"It is extraordinary," says the other.

Several years ago I watched Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills (1996), a riveting HBO documentary that detailed the trial and conviction of Jessie Misskelly, Jason Baldwin and Damien Echols (The West Memphis 3) for the brutal murder and sexual assault of three eight year old boys. The film makes a powerful case for the innocence of the convicted – who have been in jail now for some 16 years – for police incompetence,  unacceptable jury behavior, and a general miscarriage of justice. 

Johnny Depp and a number of other celebrities have recently stepped forward in hopes that their support and star power will pressure the state of Arkansas into freeing these three evidently innocent men. CBS produced this feature for its 48 Hours series earlier in 2010. Here’s the full episode [ it’s worth watching despite the cheesy sensationalized music and graphics…

Watch CBS News Videos Online

Apropos of our recent discussion with Adam Thorpe about Robin Hood and "comeuppance" we now await to see if wrongs will be righted

..and now we’re on it: here’s another reaction to industry’s systematic de-humanization of the individual

…all they could do back then was get mad…now, we can blog.

This prompted thanks to Christine McNair’s facebook post.

Congratulations to Andrew Steeves of the Gaspereau Press for cleaning up at the recent Alcuin Society’s 2010 Best Canadian Book Design Awards. He won First Place for

Prose Non-Fiction: The Marram Grass by Anne Simpson (and Third Place). First Place for Prose Fiction:

The Sentimentalists by Johanna Skibsrud. First

(with Robert Bringhurst for the latter’s Selected Poems) and Second

(for Lean-to by Tonja Gunvaldsen Klaassen) Place in Poetry.

Said he about the whole affair:

"I must admit that I view awards and prizes as a bit of a mug’s game. I don’t put much stock in their importance when we lose, so I ought not put much more stock in them when we win either. However, it’s always gratifying when your peers recognize that the work you are doing has some merit. What the Alcuin Society is saying by running this competition and awarding these prizes is that the design of books can make a significant contribution to our culture, and that’s a statement I can agree with wholeheartedly."

If you’re looking for a book collecting idea: Andrew Steeves’ work is a great one.